1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to prompting systems and, more particularly, to an improved method for navigating through a prompting system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephone-based prompting systems are in increasing use both to provide an interface to voicemail systems and to provide an interface for interactive voice response systems, such as airline reservations, bank customer account lines, and other institutional lines such as for government, utilities, credit card companies and the like. In such systems, users are presented with hierarchical levels of prompts which are navigated by pressing buttons on the telephone keypads. The resulting DTMF (dual tone multifrequency) signals are received by the prompting system and used to access a different level in the hierarchy or to access a specified function.
Frequently, such prompting systems cause user frustration in that they provide only a predetermined set of prompts in a predetermined order. The user who knows his way through the set of prompts to reach a known destination must nevertheless be presented with a voice message identifying each prompt state. While sequential overrides are available, the user must still key in an entry for each state.
Certain known telephone prompting systems permit a user to select a function which abbreviates the prompts. Thus, for example, rather than messages such as "For information concerning flight arrivals and departures, please press 1 now", the user might be presented with the message "Arrivals and departures, press 1." Such systems still, however, require the user to navigate through each of the prompts prior to reaching a desired function. Similarly, other systems allow the user to skip from one hierarchical level to another hierarchical level, but only upon being provided with a separate prompt.
Non-institutional dynamic prompting systems (i.e., those not already "fixed"), such as those for in-house voice mail systems, similarly suffer from inefficiencies in storage and retrieval. More particularly, users of such systems who wish to save messages have no way of organizing the stored messages when they use a displayless interface, such as a telephone. Such users have only the option of saving or not saving the messages. The messages then are saved in a linear queue. Frequently, such messages are saved in forward or reverse chronological order, without any further added information. If any of the saved messages is to be retrieved, the user must listen to each prompt for each message or for its header. The user is thus unable to screen his stored message for a desired one in particular.
While the use of a graphical user interface (GUI), such as those available in computer-telephony interface (CTI) systems, provides an ability to organize messages, such GUIs often are not available if users wish to access messages remotely.
What is needed, therefore, is an improved method for navigating among hierarchical levels and across hierarchical levels in a telephone prompting system. There is particularly a need for a prompting system in which a user can more rapidly navigate to a desired function. There is a further need for an improved method of organizing voicemail or multimedia messages from a displayless interface. There is particularly a need for a prompting or messaging system which permits on-the-fly voice labeling and message organization.